Friday 25 March 2011

The invention of time by man

The existence of time as a concept can be attributed to the gradual "deactivation" of the neural paths after a signal traversal and the gradual increase in resistance between two neurons.

In other words, the fact that as time goes by a connection between two neurons is more difficult to traverse for the next signal that might go that way means that a pattern that we experienced in the past will seem more "distant"/vague to us because the signal that will reach it will be less (greater resistance along the path). This also means that this pattern will agitate less the driving forces and create smaller driving pockets, marking it as a lesser priority for the brain.

So a pattern that gave me pleasure some time ago has "lost" a lot of its connection to the driving force, so if I see it again the activation of the DF will be small, so it will not promise me immediate pleasure. By this mechanism the brain prioritizes pleasure alternatives according to their... temporal proximity!!

And this is done automatically, without us reasoning about what is time. We don't have to think about it. We know what time is, as every pattern gets automatically translated to a distant or near pleasure. This way we "feel" what time is, and that's the way we are then able to reason about it and invent it as a concept.




As you may have guessed, I do not believe it "time". I believe it is an extremely useful human invention that helps us understand and model the universe.